At Home in Hespeler

June 1978. At my high school there’s a guy, that guy, with a van that has a bar and a bed in it. We’re hanging out by the smoking area, playing frisbee, drinking beer with fake “Poopsi” labels on them and he’s got the stereo cranked. “What, who, is this?” I ask.

“A new band called Van Halen,” he tells me.

As song rolls into song, including a wild version of The Kinks You Really Got Me, it’s obvious this is some band. How did these guys come up with this? Where did they even come from? I wondered. It was obvious to us, even as it wasn’t to the people who ran the music industry, this was paradigm shifting (although, being stoned high school kids, we would have phrased it not as “paradigm shifting,” but as “cool, man.”).

Van Halen Rising: How a Southern California Backyard Party Band Saved Heavy Metal by Greg Renoff answers the question “how did these guys come up with this?” or perhaps more to the point, “where did they come from?” The answer is, as the book title suggests, Southern California’s backyard party scene.

Walking the reader through the cultural and musical history of the Van Halen brothers and David Lee Roth, the book charts their concerts and performances going back to the original high school band. It charts Roth’s attempts to get into the Van Halen brothers band (Eddie was the original singer) and how Roth’s background at a predominantly black high school influenced him to have a completely different take on rock/pop music.

You learn about the hundreds, thousands of shows the band did. How they rehearsed for hours 6-days a week and Eddie would practice far more than that. And you learn even at that how hard it was for them to get a record contract. You learn about their sudden ascension to the top of the rock ladder as their debut album sells a million copies in it’s first year.

Van Halen Rising is exactly what it promises, the story of an up and coming rock band. It takes you through the teenage rock scene in the LA suburbs of the 1970’s, and up to Van Halen’s first album, first tours, and then it is done, leaving the rest of the story for others to pick up. And it doesn’t disappoint in the process.

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Book Review Van Halen

We all have our favourite Beatle. Personally, I’m a George guy, being a guitar player and as I love his playing and songwriting. But Ringo Starr comes in a close second. His good natured humour and tendency towards simple pop in his songs has it’s appeal.

Ringo: With a Little Help by Michael Seth Starr is a fairly comprehensive look at the worlds most famous drummer. Covering his early years, his time before the Beatles with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, the Beatle years and beyond, With a Little Help covers all the points of Ringo’s career.

It is also, to a degree, a defense of Ringo Starr the drummer. Often maligned (“He’s not even the best drummer in the Beatles,” John Lennon once said of Starr), With a Little Help is definitive on the point, Ringo Starr was the best drummer in Liverpool in 1962 when he joined The Beatles, and his drumming, while sometimes in-elegant, was crucial to their sound. He has a unique style due to being a left handed drummer using his set right handed, he is clumsy on fills (for much the same reason), but he is a solid to very good drummer.

With A Little Help is not all a defense of Starr, however. His very limited vocal range is an important part of the narrative and Ringo has success as a singer when he has material within his “six-note range.” As well, Ringo’s alcohol problems are well documented, as his much of his negative behaviour during his long bout of alcohol abuse. His later career work ethic is questioned and the breakdown of his first marriage to Maureen is well documented, including his affairs during the legendary “LA lost weekend” period of the early 70’s.

On the bizarre side, the author cites diary entries of teenage Ringo fanatic Marilyn Crescenzo some seventeen times, following her feelings over events in The Beatles lives in 1964-65 time frame:

This morning ten o’clock, I heard a report from the Beatles hotel and Ringo and George were talking—I said to my mother “why didn’t you let me go down there—Everybody is there.” I then walked into the bathroom and couldn’t hold back -I just cryed! [sic] I couldn’t help it!

Intended to provide color I gather, these diary entries really just fill some page space.

Ringo: With a Little Help is a good read, and an interesting look at one of our times more interesting, if reasonably unimportant, people.

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Book Review, Books Beatles, Ringo Starr

…and the burning of the non-taxable book.

I’ve been pondering designs for a few weeks now for a little free library. The idea is simple, you build a little book house and post it at the front of your house. Neighbours and neighbourly-types can put in an old book, others can borrow the book. It’s a lending library with 20 or so books.

There’s a couple in my neighbourhood, and I was planning to get in on the action, share some community spirit and a few books I have lying around. Problem is, those pimply minions of bureaucracy have come up with an all new “vile, Jacobian, jumped up Jack-in-Office piece of impertinence:” a permit for your library

As The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf explains, local governments in Los Angeles, Shreveport, LA and Leawood, KS have all tried to levy fines and other sanctions against people who put up these tiny birdhouse-like lending libraries.

I’m no longer planning on putting one up, I’m getting it up as fast as I can.

For certified professional guitar repair in Cambridge Ontario: Brian Gardiner Guitar Repair

Jacobian Piece of Impertinence, pimply minions of bureaucracy

Everyone who thinks REO Speedwagon are a cheesy 80’s band have never heard their love album, You Get What You Play For. A great straight up rock band.

I’ve always love Gary Richrath as a guitar player. So sorry to hear he passed away this weekend at the young age of 65. May he rest in peace.

I remember watching this one live.

For certified professional guitar repair in Cambridge Ontario: Brian Gardiner Guitar Repair

RIP Gary Richrath, REO Speedwagon

All the fluffy news about those nutty celebrities

Perhaps they got Kermit all wrong. Perhaps he’s supposed to be Kermit the dog, as in “you sly old…” The “it’s not easy being green,” singer (as real media would describe him) has dumped his longtime gilt-friend Miss Piggy for a new, slimmer pig.

And because we live in an insane world, people are upset about this. “How can he do this to Miss Piggy,” say some, while other, truly deluded, people, are up in arms because Denise, the new pig, is too skinny. As if the puppet has body image issues.

That’s right, I said it.  Puppet! The frog, the pig, the other pig, the dog who plays piano, all puppets. Sheesh, get over yourselves.

Although personally, if I was the frog, I’d hit on that blonde bass player.

Some James Bond controversy this week. Anthony Horowitz who wrote the latest Bond book, Trigger Mortis, has stepped in the PC muck. Then he made a mess of things.

First the PC muck. There is noise of late that the next movie Bond should be black. The name Idris Elba seems to come up a lot. He’s “a terrific actor,” says Horowitz. “But I can think of other black actors who would do it better. For me, Idris Elba is a bit too rough to play the part… a bit too street.”  Oh-oh. You can’t say that. It has racial overtones, or is code-speak for something or other.

As far as I’m concerned, so far so good. An opinion stated, leave it at that an do forth. But no, Horowitz had to go and make me not want to buy his stupid rip-off book (seriously, invent your own character, plots &tc.), and apologized via twitter. Oh look, James Bond is being written by a weak-kneed beta-male who grovels for the PC morons. That ought to make for the next Daniel Craig movie.

Meanwhile, current Bond Daniel Craig got our hopes up this week and hinted Spectre, due in theatres in November, might be his last Bond movie. In short, he suggested it’s time to get on with his life- as compared to stagnating by spending three-months every two-years being paid millions to make a movie.

As for who should play the next Bond, who cares. A tuxedo clad Miss Piggy would be a better, tougher Bond than Craig. Black, Pakistani, street, who cares. Just not another metrosexual Bond who wears a seat-belt to press events.

Tough week for Avril Lavigne. Started off last Sunday when her ex-husband, Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley, got re-married. Whibley, who a year ago was in a coma with multiple organ failure due to his drinking, has sobered up and pledged his troth to Ariana Cooper.

The bride, you’ll be breathless in your desire to know, wore a beaded, strapless white gown.

While I’m sure Lavigne is happy for Whibley, his wedding was followed by the news that Lavigne and Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger have split. The pair married in 2013, after a short courtship that apparently didn’t involve hearing each others music.

For the record, Lavigne was married to Whibley for longer than Kroeger.

When I said earlier we live in an insane world, I was dead serious. People have gone stupid, and too many papers will dutifully report the crazy like it’d normal. I submit for your perusal: Taylor Swift is in the soup for “whitewashing” her latest video. As in music video, you now, those three minute song advertisements that gave the phrase “video vamps” to the world.

Apparently  the video is based in Africa, and there are not enough black people in it. The Director, Joseph Kahn, has defended the video noting it was produced by a black woman and edited by a black man. He also said, “…it would have been historically inaccurate to load the crew with more black actors as the video would be accused of re-writing history.”  Because as you know, history books can re-write history, but heaven forbid a pop-video do so.

Dear Joseph Kahn. Shut up! and stop treating these loony’s like they’re not completely nuts, lest we get the impression you are too. And that goes double for you, Anthony Horowitz and Kermit the Frog.

For certified professional guitar repair in Cambridge Ontario: Brian Gardiner Guitar Repair

Uncategorized

are the “journalists” whose salary you are forced to pay.

Something by the way of a juxtaposition:
From Lifesite News: 

As thousands of “outraged parents” gathered today in front of 103 of the 107 MPP constituency offices across Ontario

Heard on CBC Radio 2 on Wednesday (sorry, no link. I heard this myself and wrote it down verbatim):

Some parents protested outside the offices of Provincial politicians today. They’re upset about the new sex-ed curriculum.(emphasis mine)

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bad journalism, CBC, Media doesn't matter

One can’t help but wonder if Mrs. Mark Steyn lets her husband win the odd fight, lest a 900-page rebuttal in 3 parts be published, highlighting the ways in which she argued illogically over the course of their marriage. Likely not, but then who’d of thought suing the guy for libel would get you one of those.

Certainly not Michael Mann.

When Mann sued Steyn, I was one of those who thought he picked a dangerous sparring partner, and having read Lights Out, his response to an action against him in Canada, I knew Steyn wouldn’t just roll over and accept what Mann was giving. He would, at the least, make it uncomfortable for Mann. After all, he took on Ryerson Journalism Professor John Miller in Lights Out, and has not been afraid to absolutely skewer the occasional correspondent to his own website, steynonline.com. Even positive reviews that dare get the name of the next Bond movie wrong get their error highlighted. So it was a good guess that Mann v. Steyn would have its entertaining moments.

With A Disgrace to the Profession: The Worlds Scientists in Their Own Words – on Michael E. Mann, His Hockey Stick, and Their Damage to Science: Volume One, he doesn’t so much a make it uncomfortable for Mann as eviscerate his. The book is 300-pages of climate scientists, physicists and others with Ph.D. after their name, speaking ill of Mann and his work. With Steyn’s witty apercus throughout, A Disgrace to the Profession reads quite comfortably, not bogging down in technical details as a book devoted to science such as this is always at risk of doing.

A Disgrace to the Profession is a comprehensive take down. Mann may have thought he could sue Steyn into silence and he was wrong. But if he thought his reputation had been given a hit by Steyn, and he could regain it through the courts, he was as wrong as he’s ever been (and as Steyn makes pretty clear in A Disgrace to the Profession, that’s saying something). Win, lose or tie in the DC courts, it seems unlikely Mann’s reputation will survive his ill-advised fight with Mark Steyn.

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Hockey, Mark Steyn Mark Steyn, Michael Mann